On Monday night, a crowd of 200 assembled at a construction site in Harlem for the first panel in a series called “Changing Architecture.” The discussion, moderated by Metropolis editor-in-chief Susan S. Szenasy, focused on the need for architects to develop a wider skill set that will enable them to take a more involved role in the building process of their projects.

Among the evening’s panelists was Peter Gluck, founder and principal at the firm Gluck+. He is a strong believer in architects getting their hands dirty at the construction site, working with communities, and being held responsible for a project coming in on budget.  He remarked that “Architectural thinking is seen as a luxury item not relevant to the real needs of the development process…Architects need to acquire multi-faceted knowledge and accept previously shunned responsibilities in order to change this perception.”

Design-build firms like Gluck+ have established successful practices by creating teams of skilled architects who have a firm grasp of making a building and everything that goes with it—a deep understanding of how their designs will be made by the craftsmen and builders involved. By utilizing this knowledge and following their work through the entire building process, the firm can ensure that the quality and cost of the finished building is in keeping with the needs of the developer and the surrounding community. Read more…

Since I first began teaching the Harvard Case El Bulli: A Taste of Innovation in all my MBA New Products & Services classes, it has become my students’ favorite case because the lessons can be applied to large companies.  The case has also inspired my own new business venture, Inventours, that brings senior level execs to meet with best-in-class innovators in product design, food, technology, architecture, fashion, sustainability and hospitality, in their workplaces, to see their work, hear their philosophies, and understand how physical and mental environments can impact creativity and collaboration. Here are some key “take aways” companies like.

Leaders with a vision and working philosophy, clearly understood and shared by the entire organization, create more productive working environments. Chef Ferran Adria is a leader. He leads by making his values and working philosophy well known and embraced by his entire team. This includes never copying others; surprising and delighting customers by evoking emotions, childhood memories, irony, wonder, and analogies; engaging all the senses, if possible, with each dish; breaking the rules and not being constrained by what has been done before. Firms that work most productively and cohesively fully understand the values and mission of their companies. They know what is and isn’t consistent. They don’t waste time guessing what the objectives really are and working on products and services that don’t fit.

It’s critical to allow and allocate time to innovate and do things well. El Bulli closed for six months each year, to allow the core group of “inventors” to scan the globe for new ingredients, food combinations, cooking equipment, techniques, and presentations.  While large companies cannot shut down for months, Google has a 20% time rule and 3M has a 15% rule that allow employees to devote time to projects they’re passionate about, that may have nothing to do with their jobs. It helps to sanction employees taking a step back to view their own business and the company’s other businesses from a distance, to explore hypotheses, and new business ideas. Firms, whose employees are caught up in day-to-day firefighting, are much less likely to think into the future and be really innovative. Read more…

Micro apartments are the future, encouraging their inhabitants to buy less, use fewer resources, and live in a more streamlined, minimal way. Which is exactly why they were featured in both last and this month’s Metropolis (It’s a Small World); they presage new ways for us to live, and the concurrent design challenges inherent to them. While tiny apartments aren’t exactly news in some urban areas, the newest versions clock in at anywhere from 140 square feet (Microsoft-adjacent apodments in Redmond, Washington) to a more typical 420 square feet, (recently approved in San Francisco) to 370 square feet (largest micro apartments in NYC).

But what about REALLY micro apartments?

In Hong Kong, one of the most densely populated cities in the world (with rents some 35% higher than in New York City) about 100,000 people, including families, live 40 square-foot spaces (I don’t think most of us would qualify them as ‘apartments’), as depicted in these arresting photographs from the city’s Society for Community Organization (above and below):

Most of us, no matter where we live, will question if those spaces are big enough for one person, let alone a family. But it definitely begs the question, how small is “too small”? How do we arrive at the minimum sizes for a dwelling?  A confab among city planners, designers, potential residents and maybe even sociologists or anthropologists is needed here.

In New York City, as in most cities, the minimum apartment size was set by zoning laws. In 1987, the smallest a new apartment could be was set at 400 square feet (older, smaller places were grandfathered in). For mayor Bloomberg to introduce the small apartment plans that he did, he had to get special zoning permissions. The same is true for San Francisco, Philadelphia, Redmond, Washington and other cities with micro spaces; they have to be designed and sold as a specific type of dwelling to meet a specific need. Indeed, as the original article points out, most of them have space-saving built-in appliances and closets, and often, high ceilings, so space is utilized intelligently and encourages openness and comfort. They aren’t just small, but smartly so.

Ultimately, it’s the designers who determined these apartments’ sizes (which were then approved and vetted by public housing officials and the public, during exhibitions and competitions for the best design). They are, truly, crowd sourced apartments, both in size and layout. But why not let the market determine the apartment sizes?

This seems like it might work until you read through the comments on many of these micro apartment stories online. What one person calls a micro-apartment, another calls a tenement. But tenements were about small spaces being used to house families (closer to the Hong Kong examples, above), and a large proportion of city dwellers no longer live in a family unit; in NYC in 2009, 33% of people lived in their apartments alone, and 17% contained couples sans kids – but yet there’s a glut of 2- and 3-bedroom apartments for family units. All those singles and couples desperately need smaller (read: more affordable, and more suited to their lifestyles) places, but there are only 100,000 studios and one-bedrooms available in NYC—their scarcity then drives their prices higher than they should be.

As Jerilyn Perine, executive director of the Citizens Housing and Planning Council told channel Thirteen’s Metrofocus, “The housing market can’t possibly keep up with the population growth we’re projecting. This idea that adding to the housing supply by continually adding housing for families doesn’t address the underlying needs. This need is increasingly finding its way onto the underground housing market.”

Micro apartments offer a solution to the problem. But the majority of people will always want more space (see the upsetting New York Times article about elderly folks living in large, subsidized apartments, refusing to give them up). And for many, living in a small space is a question of prior experience. If you grew up in a suburban house, a micro apartment can seem “too small.” But for someone who has lived in a studio for years, it might seem plenty large enough (and some people, as in the Hong Kong example, are willing and able to live in too-small spaces if they aren’t regulated away from that). So maybe designers and city planners are the best final arbiters on apartment size, since it seems that other approaches, like letting developers or renters themselves decide, has so far resulted in ineffective solutions.

Starre Vartan is an author, journalist, and artist whose work concentrates on sustainability in consumer products, including a focus on vernacular, nature-based, and eco design. Recognized as a green living expert, she is the publisher of Eco-chick.com, a columnist at MNN.com, and contributes to Inhabitat and The Huffington Post. She is Metropolis’s copyeditor.

What if you herded a bunch of architects into one neighborhood and let them loose to design…

It’s been done before. Columbus, Indiana, comes to mind with more than 60 public buildings by signature architects. Ok, it’s a city not a neighborhood, but you get the idea.

Northern Liberties, a late 18^th century Philadelphia neighborhood exhibits a high concentration of architect- designed structures blossoming along its comfortably scaled streets. You can’t help noticing, pondering what it means to have so many new, well intentioned buildings jostling each other in one place.

By mid 19^th century, Philadelphia had banned certain noxious industries from downtown, relegating them instead to Northern Liberties. Immigrant workers and artisans ensconced themselves and their homes amidst the din and dust of their own livelihood. Remnants of abandoned mills, tanneries, and breweries are now interspersed with old brick row homes standing inhabited and intact.

New residences and commercial properties designed by contemporary architects bring vitality and economic promise to an area of the city that, for many years, was stuck in neutral. The neighborhood has become more intensely gentrified with many cafes, bars, microbreweries, restaurants, outdoor dining, festivals in summer and a retro 1950’s looking bowling alley. A big community garden on grassy, sloping land is a great playground for kids. In short, Northern Liberties is a magnet for resident artists, architects, designers, and other professionals who, in a sense, represent a tie to those workers and artisans of the past.

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The international design competition, sponsored by HP and Microsoft, in partnership with the creative platform Talenthouse, was called the HP/Microsoft Smart Office Challenge. The challenge was nothing less than to design the ultimate office space of the future. No pressure. The only requirement was that the design had to feature existing HP technology.

Our team won both the judges’ and the people’s choice awards. We are MulvannyG2 Architecture and industrial design firm Zac & Co., formed as collaborators on a design called HP MIMIC, a movable workplace that can be customized by touching a screen. With this design, users will be able to transform their offices to match their individual work styles and requirements, in addition to incorporating their company’s culture. Made of rigid aluminum and fully wired, the “plug and play” design features a collapsible system of rotating electrochromatic glass modules, controlled via a HP tablet interface. Last month, a prototype, built by HP, was presented at the Alt Design Summit in Salt Lake City. This animated video, created by MulvannyG2, illustrates the concept.

Here Alan Feltoon and Zachary Feltoon – in real life they’re father and son – discuss their design process for the HP MIMIC, the rapidly expanding role of flexible technology in the workspace, and the importance of design competitions in pushing forward new ideas.

Alan Feltoon: Collaboration can be wonderfully messy, particularly when crossing disciplines, with the potential for creating big ideas and concepts. Our two firms had previously worked together on the Battery Park Conservancy Design Competition, “Draw Up a Chair.” Through that process we realized how well we work together and were eager to do it again. The HP/Microsoft Smart Office Challenge presented an ideal opportunity.

Zachary Feltoon: I found it fascinating how much the language surrounding various types of creative design can differ. At first, it was like having a multilingual charrette. We were using different terms, yet trying to get to the same place. But soon we progressed to conversations that would include all aspects of the user experience while also using other mediums to inform our own work. When you collaborate you open yourself up to new ideas, and in that regard you’re never working solely within your own medium.

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Health indicators are pointing in the wrong direction. Healthcare costs are rising to unprecedented levels. To address these challenges, it’s become imperative that our municipal policies and initiatives be reconsidered. How can design help? As I see it, design provides a key preventative strategy. Designers can improve public health outcomes and enhance our everyday environments. The lens of design can help us focus and re-conceptualize the public health impacts of our cities and buildings. Healthy communities will help stem our raging epidemic of obesity and the chronic diseases that result from our sedentary lifestyles and bad diets.

But when you think of health, you may be thinking of the medical industry and the illnesses it treats. It’s time to turn this idea on its head. Let’s start focusing, instead, on preventative strategies that reduce the incidence of sickness in the first place.

A key policy, health by design, can be integrated directly into our cities, and architects can play a central role in designing healthier buildings and communities. Many of the problems we face today can be solved by simply looking at the amenities people already want from their cities: developments close to transit, shopping, restaurants, social services, and community services. These are essential parts of a comprehensive, systems-level solution. Active lifestyles rely, in large part, on expanding the options for when, where, and how people can live, work, and play.

Cities and towns looking to help their people stay healthy, now have access to a helpful document, produced by the American Institute of Architects. Local Leaders: Healthier Communities Through Design is a roadmap to design techniques that encourage residents to increase their physical activity. I see this new publication as a key resource for government officials, design professionals, and other stakeholders collaborating to address America’s public health challenges.

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We know, both intuitively and practically, that socially interactive spaces, furnished with warm materials and rich textures, are beneficial and useful to the people who occupy them. But how do you convince the data-driven person who pays the bills? Buildings cost money. Owners want their dollars to go far. That’s reasonable. It’s because of this that architects are asked to prove that their designs marry performance and efficiency with inspiration and user comfort.

Federal Center South

Our practice is focused on designing amenity-rich architecture, from spaces where interaction can take place in laboratories to art rooms and family lounges in hospitals. Atriums are utilized in all kinds of building typologies to bring daylight deep into a floor plate, create a natural gathering spot for users, and aid in wayfinding. Our recently completed U.S. General Services Administration, Federal Center South Building 1202 in Seattle, illustrates this approach. The building uses an oxbow-shaped atrium to connect conference rooms, amenities, and offices. Here the atrium is particularly successful because it utilizes biophilic strategies that connect employees to living systems through the use of daylight, views, fresh air, vegetation, and natural finishes. All of these strategies, together, enhance the user experience. But such amenities add to the building’s square footage and often the construction cost – thereby reducing the efficiency of the cost per square foot. Measuring their appeal to the users’ humanity can be proven by the employees’ enhanced performance and satisfaction.  Still, making the case for this can be challenging from a purely quantitative standpoint.

We were recently challenged to design a new office building for a technology firm that wanted to measure the efficiencies and performance of the new project. I was part of the team asked that our decision-making process be based on empirical data rather than qualitative emotion.  The company had a strong desire to have a healthy, inspiring workplace for its employees, but required all qualitative design decisions to be based on evidence. They weren’t going to be sold on pretty renderings alone.

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Data is becoming the designer’s new best friend. Urban designers, architects, and landscape architects – whether they’ve realized it yet, or not – will soon be integrating massive sets of data into every design they do.

Esri representatives show a 3D computer model of a skyline and view analysis at the GeoDesign Summit, courtesy of Esri

These fields are entering the age of geodesign, an emerging concept that melds the geospatial data of geographic information systems, or GIS, with simulation and design evaluation techniques. Through geographic analysis of the various streams of data relating to a project and its site, geodesign creates the potential for real-time vetting of design ideas within the grander context of the site. From hydrology and habitat to traffic patterns and energy regimes, multitudes of data are now easily available and nearly as easily integrated into the designs of the built environment. Designers can quickly know how a 10-story building would affect shadows, water stresses, parking demands, and solar energy potential in a neighborhood. Or how those factors would change if it were 15 stories. Or how such a project would be affected by 15 inches of sea level rise over the next decade.

The applications run wide and long – from weighing transit oriented development versus traditional development along an as-yet-unbuilt light rail line to assessing stakeholder support for various redevelopment schemes to analyzing the impact of a proposed roadway on the grazing patterns of wildlife in a national park. Planners, designers, and resource managers are using geodesign for all of these projects and more. Projects like these were highlighted at the recent GeoDesign Summit, a two-day conference held at the Redlands, California headquarters of GIS software powerhouse Esri. Example after example showed how geospatial information could not only inform the design process, but actually improve the way projects respond to and relate with that information.

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Previously, we wrote about Oscar Niemeyer’s architectural legacy and the relatively non-Eurocentric direction of Latin American modernism. While Niemeyer’s undulating buildings present unique restoration challenges, the U.S. is also facing trials with its own, typically rectilinear modern buildings. Looming large are the weather extremes of climate change and the quest for energy efficiency, making it apparent that the worst aspects of our mid-century buildings are their envelopes.

Designers of concrete and masonry architecture in our temperate zones often disregarded energy consumption and thermal comfort in the last century. Their buildings are a virtual list of today’s “don’ts”…too much glass, single-pane glass with an R-value of one, concrete thermal bridges with a flywheel effect in the wrong direction, zero insulation, and poor air and vapor barriers.

Elson Arts Center, Phillips Academy, Andover, MA
Perfectly rectilinear yet large single-glazed openings allow significant heat loss and solar heat gain. The school replaced the windows with new “oversized” insulated glazing units with low-emissivity glass, nearly doubling the R-value of the walls.

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The Argentinean blog Ombu Architecture recently posted a wonderful animation that shows off, in alphabetical order, some of the world’s most influential architects and their greatest works. “The ABC of Architects” begins with Alvar Aalto and runs all the way to Zaha Hadid, bouncing through the list in a playfully minimal style.

The ABC of Architects from fedelpeye on Vimeo.

In the animation, each building disappears almost as quickly as it appears, but by reducing them to their most basic elements, the buildings become instantly familiar. When the video ends, don’t be surprised if you find yourself starting all over again.

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